iOS 12 to Focus on Performance and Refinement

Originally published at: https://tidbits.com/2018/06/04/ios-12-to-focus-on-performance-and-refinement/

Instead of shaking up the iOS experience, iOS 12 focuses on improving performance, refineme, and features to help you fight against device addiction.

I’d actually say that speeding up older devices (if they truly manage it) is a game changer.

Now that I’m reading impressions of the beta, you may be right. I’m understanding that the beta 1 performance boost is significant over iOS 11.4, and that’s probably only going to increase when it ships and no longer has all the beta diagnostics running in the background.

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Fully agree.

I’ve installed iOS 12 beta 1 on my iPad Air and iPhone 6, and I can confirm that the performance improvement is significant. My iPhone 6 was basically unusable with iOS 11, but is zippy with the iOS 12 beta. And that’s with a degraded battery.

That’s very good news. Thanks for the report, Josh. As somebody who’s also got an old iPhone 6 I really appreciate it.

Now if only they would go back to Jobs “no DRM” stance and remove all the DRM from  Books.

So, Josh, should I stay with iOS 10.3.3 on my iDevices and just go to iOS 12 in the Fall?

I don’t see any reason to avoid upgrading to iOS 11.4.

So there are no speed or battery life penalties running iOS 11 on iPad Mini 3 & 4? ALL features in iOS 11 will work on them?

Assuming the speed isn’t impacted why would every new feature have to work for you to benefit from the ones that do?

At the very least you will benefit from the security improvements. Is that enough of a benefit to make the risk worthwhile? Not necessarily. Especially not on a buggy release.

But don’t set up a false dichotomy. Plenty of iOS 12 features won’t work on an iPhone 5s, but I’d be willing to bet that most everybody will find the speed benefit worth upgrading for, if it’s really as good as they say.

You missed the point of my reply to Josh’s reply to me.

  1. I asked if it would be OK to go directly from iOS 10.3.3 to iOS 12 on my iPad Mini 3 & Mini 4
  2. Josh suggested going to iOS 11.4 in the meantime
  3. I asked about any penalties to battery life or speed with iOS 11.4.

I’ve already tentatively planned on installing iOS 12 when it is released in the Fall on my Minis & iPhone 10. My concern is solely iOS 11.4 penalties/problems on the Minis

  1. Shouldn’t be a problem.
  2. I mistakenly read 10.3.3 as 11.3.3. Um, you probably should upgrade to iOS 11 for the security updates, but I’m not going to pretend it doesn’t have some problems. I guess if you upgrade and hate it, you could hold out for the iOS 12 public beta, but you’ll want to upgrade sooner or later and the longer you hold off the harder the transition will be.
  3. You’ll probably take a performance hit. I’m less sure about battery life. But I’m running iOS 11 on my wife’s iPad mini 4 and it seems fine. Older devices seem to be affected much worse by iOS 11, but thankfully I think iOS 12 will fix that.

And normally, I wouldn’t recommend a beta OS, but if your device is practically unusable with iOS 11, then I would seriously consider a beta of iOS 12.

Thanks, Josh

It was the statement that iOS 12 would have a positive effect on the older hardware that interested me. The iPad Mini is the perfect size for my use so I’m hoping an updated version will be released this year. I may try putting iOS 11.4 on my iPad Mini 4 and see how it goes. I’ll wait for the release of iOS 12 before updating the Mini 3.

That sounds like a sensible plan. I’m not sure how the performance of iOS 12 will compare to iOS 10, but it’s certainly faster than iOS 11.

I have had iOS 11 on my iPad mini 4 since iOS 11 was released and the battery life and performance is just fine. I have an iPhone X, and of course performance is different, but I certainly don’t feel as if I am waiting with the Mini on iOS 11.4; I upgraded to this one last year when I just couldn’t take my old iPad 3 on iOS 9 anymore. (That was a horrible experience.) The Mini 4 is just fine on iOS 11. (I have no idea about the Mini 3, but it uses the same processor as the iPhone 5s, so I assume performance would be about the same as that phone on iOS 11.)

Thanks for the info, Doug. Sounds encouraging.

I have a mini 2 and an iPhone 6 running 11.4. Both feel quite slow, especially switching apps or launching new apps. The mini 2 feels particularly bogged down. I really hope iOS 12 makes a difference.

I have an iPhone 6 running iOS 11.4 and I am quite happy with it. Not as zippy as 10.3.3 but I’m happy enough. I took too actions.

  1. In January I did a complete wipe of the iPhone 6 and installed a fresh iOS. This is not the Erase All Content and Settings operation but something a little more difficult to do. I restored from backup and problems disappeared and ran much faster.

  2. In March the iPhone started slowing down again and it was difficult for the battery to last a day. I replaced the battery for $30. Performance improved a lot and the battery easily last an entire day.

I am hopeful that iOS 12 will enable me to keep my iPhone 6 another 2 years. And I am glad I upgraded to iOS 11.

What did you do, exactly?